To see what the coronavirus outbreak really looks like, Dr. Rajeev Fernando took a one-day trip to Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. He traveled on Jan. 17th—more than half a month since the deadly virus had started spreading there.
As an infectious disease expert, what he saw was surprising, and alarming.
“I saw about 10 percent of the population wearing masks,” said the chief of infectious disease at a hospital in New York, “It was just not that much. And it didn’t make any sense to me.”
“If those people knew there’s an active outbreak that’s going on, you know, people would have been more precautious,” he said.
Official figures report thousands being infected in China and nearly 200 killed, however, experts say the actual number infected is much higher. Several countries, including the United States, Germany, and Japan are evacuating citizens from Wuhan, China.
Fernando said the lack of precaution could result from authorities under-reporting cases at the time.
“When you have an outbreak, cases are multiplying every day,” he said, “And the authorities over there were saying that there aren’t any new cases for a whole week. And that got me very suspicious. As a result of this, I thought there was no transparency with the people.”
He also questioned the effectiveness of China’s lock-down measures. Chinese authorities have now put tens of millions of people under quarantine.
“By locking everyone down, say even the people who are not infected were healthy, they are forced to be with infected people and they get infected.”
“I think the Chinese the politicians were under a lot of pressure to do something quickly because they hadn’t reported a case in a week,” he said, “People were just going on as business as usual. And suddenly they say, well, you know, we have 500 cases overnight or 1000 cases the next day. And people obviously are panicky and, quite frankly, upset with the government to say: why have you delayed this?”
When Fernando left Wuhan from the local airport, he noticed how easily potentially infected patients could have left the city and headed for other places in the world.
“When I got to the airport, for example, where the local authorities said that there is an abundance of screening at the airports and I walked in and there really was nothing,” he said, “There was no screening whatsoever.”
He flew to Hong Kong. Once he arrived, the situation was totally different.
“As soon as I got off the flight, there were three or four people right on top of me checking my temperature, checking everyone’s temperature. It was very aggressive,” he said.
“And that upset me,” he said, “It was like China was not checking people aggressively, to actually, if they were infected, stop them from flying. So that was a big concern for me.”
He expects many more cases to emerge. With that, he says, data transparency and a global effort are most important.